Preserved Wook is an oldtime New England railway engineman who calls to life again the history & technology not only of the steam locomotive in the LAST Steam Age of the Old Atlantic West, but of many a wonderful way of getting around in the World, in a better time when travel indeed was for the few…and the very few!

Tales Of The “Greatest Generation”

My ninety-one-years’ old farm neighbor, Mr Judson Andersen, who was in the Army in WW II, is scathing about “homefront heroes,” bogus “4-Fs” and “ALL the lying sonsofbitches and tailchasers who cashed in selling each other stolen tires and gas stickers!” He says “if the dumb bastards’d really known they were being asked to get killed for THESE pricks they’d have taken the joint apart!” On the other hand, Jud is no slouch and as he is a skilled welder didn’t have to go abroad. Indeed, he was working as a civilian contractor in the Navy yard at Pearl at the Jap raid, and when called up he welded add-ons to tanks and tracked vehicles in Oklahoma and Ft Lewis, Washington. He hates my romance with steam locomotives as he “got dragged all over Hell on the God-damn things by the assholes during the God-damn war.” Also, “if the sonsofbitches could stop in a God-damn tunnel and gas your ass they God-damn it WOULD!” At the end, in the prolonged process of getting out of the Army, Mr Andersen did “go all over Hell,” from Ft Lewis to southern California and then Tennessee and back to Ft Sill, Oklahoma, before being (finally!) de-mobbed at Ft Leonard Wood, Missouri. “I lugged my dufflebags all over the God-damn country, I had a bunch of these Army coveralls tucked away in there, damn good duds for work, the only thing the dirty bastards had that was worth a shit except for the atom bomb, and you bet I kept a real close eye on ‘em…so then, sure as Hell, they marched us all into this God-damn warehouse and said ‘alright, you dumb bastards, now these Jap swords and flags and German pistols and shrunken heads, you were dumb enough to play along with the BS, you get to keep all that bullshit, nobody gives a hooper’s good God-damn about THAT. But ANYTHING of Uncle Sammy’s stays right here — so dump ‘em out, you yardbird brain GI assholes!’ Jesus Christ Almighty, Jew and liberal, I was madder than a complete sonofabitch, but anyway, to Hell with ‘em, I had the last laugh! In ‘47 there in Mankato the Yid Ohsman had a whole shitaree of the damn boilersuits, war-surplus, two bits each. I made out like a God-damn thief AND a Democrat THAT day! God DAMN ‘em to Hell anyway…!”

Indeed, the first time Mr Andersen told me this, in 1968, he was attired in one of the coveralls, much patched by his mother then yet living, and he still wears an old pair often in the Winter, although now he has to roll and pin up the much-frayed cuffs. Mr Andersen, never at all tall, by his own account has “kind of fallen in on myself…kind of like that asshole Bush sonofabitch!”

I commented before about my dad in North Africa in WW II. He had a bronze figurine that he finally ‘fessed up was looted. “Well, there wasn’t anybody around to ask.” He hated it, the Army and especially the sunburn he was so blond, I don’t blame him. Anyway, they probably ALL have their little secrets don’t you think. For many it was probably their only adventure and then they came home and went to work. We have to remember most of the WW II vets stayed married and all that. I guess I’m glad we had more fun if you can call it that, but they still seem like better people than us. Good PR!